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Coming Soon To WvW

Wintersday is coming and along with all the other goodies there will be a few updates to WvW. Some of these changes are the result of forum feedback while others are part of our longer term plans for WvW. Here’s a quick preview of what WvW will get for Wintersday:

Advance notification of new builds
In order to allow WvW players to make good decions about siege placement, assault timing, etc. we’re adding a new build pre-announcement. This will be in the form of a message broadcast to all players some time before the current build expires. Because this notification is tied to one of the final steps in our build process, and those final steps take a variable amount of time, we won’t be able to say exactly when the current build will expire. Instead, the message will provide a window of time in which the new build will become available.
Alt+F4 is no escape
If someone that you’re fighting disconnects during combat (via Alt+F4, killing the client process, etc.) their character will be instantly killed, death penalties will be applied, and XP & loot will be handed out as usual. [A later post by Habib stated that this will not affect PVE, there were questions about how "honest" d/c's would be affected by this that have not yet been answered as I type this. ~Blade]

No more insta-build walls & gates
Destroyed walls and gates will now rebuild when they reach 10% health rather than on the very first repair. This means that when attackers down a wall or gate defenders won’t be able to instantly rebuild it. Walls and gates which are destroyed can still be damaged if they have any health.

Breakout events
We’ve added a new event type to WvW called Breakout events which trigger when one or more teams have been pushed completely out of a map. They’re designed both to help players break out of severly camped portal keeps and to provide assistance in establishing a foothold in each map. Here’s what designer Matt Witter has to say about them:

Break Out Events are special WvW events that will happen when a team has lost control of all defensive structures, not counting supply camps. An NPC commander will appear in the team’s start area and an event will start that prompts players to gather around. Once enough players are in the commander’s presence he will summon his trusty dolyak to give all allies in the area full supply. He will then lead the charge to the nearby objective and give players protection and assist with building siege to assault the objective with. Those benefits, along with a defensive boon that he applies to all nearby allies, makes the attacking players a force to be reckoned with. Defenders will have their work cut out for them, as once the gate or wall piece is destroyed the commander will move to the tower lord inside and attack anyone in his path.

These changes are just a small part of what the WvW team has been up to lately. As you may have already heard, we’re hard at work on some larger updates that we plan to deliver in February. We’re not quite ready to talk about the details yet but as February gets closer we’ll start to reveal more of our secrets.

Happy Wintersday and we’ll see you on the battlefield!

Nice stuff. The February hint is welcome news too, I'm sure, for people who enjoy this. My brother in law is really getting into this game type now, so I'll probably be doing this more now too. lol Well, I was going to need those badges for the legendary weapon anyway. Might help me get a Monthly too if I can ever make time for dungeons.

Hopefully the alt-f4 penalty doesn't apply if your client crashes. Because GW2 crashes all the time in WvW for me, and I don't want to add armor repair fees on top of having to reboot my PC and re-queue. I'm already completely avoiding WvW unless it's the last thing I need for my monthly achievements, but if I end up having to pay for armor repairs everytime I crash while in combat, I'm just not gonna bother.

Putting graphics on low helps make it more stable, but it still crashes. Unless I avoid zergs. But then I don't really get any kills, and make no progress on my monthly.

Advance notification of new builds - yeah, good. Should have been there a while ago, IMO. Been kicked for new build while playing, more than a bit annoying, especially if you lose loot because of it.

Alt-F4 penalty - great. I die in WvW, it is annoying when it happens a lot and it eats your money, but, it is even more annoying to have your enemy down and them to suddenly vanish, leaving you with nothing but wasted time. It is a form of griefing, whether done out of rage or spite. Obviously, it is perfectly possible for some people to experience problems like genuine crashes and disconnects, but given that I have seen people bragging that they Alt-F4 just to be annoying, not all of the cases of mysteriously vanishing downed enemies are due to connection issues or crashes.

Instabuild walls and gates - yes, I have been on both sides of that one. It does make sense for them to change that, 10% seems like a good number. Will see how it plays out.

Breakout Events - this could help underdog servers that struggle with morale when being outmanned and dominated by their opponents, making for more enjoyable matches from both sides. Nobody likes it when they are outmanned and the enemy hold everything, and nobody likes it when their opponents decide they would just be better off not playing that week due to being unable to gain any foothold.

More than an upgrade, I need a brand new gaming PC. Problem is, I don't really have money for a new gaming PC right now . This one's almost 5 years old and I've been having issues related to almost every piece of hardware for a few months, which makes me think my motherboard is dying. (I mean, not even getting to POST? Getting stuck on initializing USB, Ram Detection, video card related crashes, hard drive related crashes, all started at the same time? It's either the MB or the PSU). Problems aren't that frequent though. If I don't count GW2 crashes, it's about 1 or 2 small issues a week. GW2 tends to crash at least twice a day. And I have to start it 2 or 3 times because the first time almost always gives me a disk-write error for some reason.

Funnily enough, most games will still run fine. It's pretty much just GW2 that's being difficult. Especially if I run a web browser in the background at the same time. GW2 is more prone to crashes than an Elder Scrolls game.

Sorry for the OT, just needed a place to vent.

But I'm totally for punishing alt-f4-ing and stuff. Quitting just because you're going to die spoils the fun. Of course, I'd have personally preferred it if WvW was handled like sPvP. Everything unlocked, everyone on equal footing, no PvE loot.

I love the idea of Breakout Events. Makes for a more enjoyable experience for the underdog server that is constantly pinned at their primary waypoint. Also, this could provide some resistance against one world doing night caps.

^word. The only people who won't like it are those that habitually dominate the entire map. Which is probably an issue on the lower tiers more than anything, but still. Even baddies deserve a chance.

I beleive even those that dominate entire maps will like this change simply due to the fact that currently when a server gets kicked out of an entire map they usually don't have the morale to even try and make a comeback, which puts the dominating server in a very boring position.